Search by subject

News stories

News stories provides summaries of all the main stories on poverty, social exclusion, inequality and social mobility in the UK from 2011 to 2014. Some major stories from outside the UK are also included.

The Conservative Party chairman, Grant Shapps MP, has been criticised by the official statistics watchdog for making misleading statements on incapacity benefit claims. Shapps had said in March 2013 that: '878,300 people claiming incapacity benefit – more than a third of the total – have chosen to drop their benefit claim entirely rather than face a medical assessment'.

A woman who was threatened with the 'bedroom tax' on unoccupied rooms in social housing has committed suicide. Stephanie Bottrill, aged 53, died in the early hours of 4 May after being hit by a lorry on the motorway near her home in Solihull in the west midlands.

Mrs Bottrill left a note to her family saying: 'Don’t blame yourself for me ending my life. The only people to blame are the Government, no-one else'. Her family said she had been worried about how she would afford an extra £20 a week as a result of housing benefit cuts. She lived in a three-bedroom house on her own. Government changes mean families deemed to have more living space than they need are faced with having their housing benefit cut – the so-called 'bedroom tax'.

Mrs Bottrill's son told a local newspaper: 'She was fine before the bedroom tax. It was dreamt up in London, by people in offices and big houses. They have no idea the effect it has on people like my mum'.

The target for eliminating child poverty by 2020, set by the previous Labour government, has been criticised as 'technocratic', over-centralised and unaffordable by Nick Pearce, director of the influential Institute for Public Policy Research think tank.

Pearce said Labour's attempt to end child poverty had been so expensive that 'it was running out of road even before 2008, never mind now'. He added: 'At the same time, [Labour's] highly centralised, even technocratic approach to tackling child poverty failed to speak to people's everyday concerns about childhood, not least those officially labelled as 'poor'. As a result, Labour struggled to secure widespread public support for its ambitions or mobilise families and communities behind them. Contrast this to the popular attachment generated for the newly created children's centres'.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has been rebuked by the official statistics watchdog for claiming the benefits cap is pushing people to find paid work. It said his claim was not supported by the official statistics, and was a breach of the code of practice on their use.

Duncan Smith had claimed in April that 8,000 people who would have been affected by the benefits cap had already moved into jobs ahead of its introduction, and that this 'clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact'. This prompted an official complaint to the UK Statistics Authority by the TUC. In response the watchdog ruled that notes accompanying the statistics on which Duncan Smith relied make it clear that methodological and other factors – and not 'behavioural change' – lay behind a drop in estimates of those potentially affected by the cap.

There was a 170 per cent increase in the number of people turning to emergency food banks in 2012-13, according to food bank charity the Trussell Trust. It says almost 350,000 people received at least three days' emergency food during the 12 months to 31 March – nearly 100,000 more than anticipated and close to triple the number helped in the preceding year. Of those helped, 126,889 (nearly 37 per cent) were children.

As many as 2.5 million people may be claiming out-of-work benefits on a long-term basis, according to an analysis by the Department for Work and Pensions. And it added that there are just over a million even when those on incapacity benefits are excluded.

New 'anti-poverty champions' are being planned in Wales to help the poorest groups in society and protect those most at risk of poverty and social exclusion. The Welsh Government is asking each of the 22 local councils in Wales to create two champions, one of them an elected councillor and the other a senior council official.

The Minister for Communities and Tackling Poverty, Huw Lewis, said the champions will be an integral part of the Welsh Government's response to poverty – against a background of economic recession and benefit changes that will hit the most vulnerable groups hardest.

The national minimum wage for adults will rise by 12p from October 2013 to £6.31 an hour, ministers have announced. This represents a cash increase of 1.9 per cent – but a real-terms cut when compared with current retail price inflation of 3.2 per cent.

The minimum rate for young people aged 18-20 will rise by even less, just 5p (1 per cent), to £5.03 an hour. For those aged 16-17 it will rise by 4p (1.1 per cent) to £3.72.

Ministers did, however, reject a recommendation from the official Low Pay Commission that the rate for apprentices should be frozen. The apprentice rate will instead increase by 3p (1.1 per cent) to £2.68 an hour.

People in the UK are more likely to feel sympathy for people in poverty than their counterparts in the USA, France or Germany, according to the results of an opinion survey summarised exclusively in the Guardian newspaper.

The results derive from a YouGov online poll conducted between 28 March and 4 April 2013, involving over 6,000 adults (1,994 in the UK, 1,220 in the USA, 990 in France and 2,101 in Germany).

Roll-out of the controversial cap on household benefit payments began in four London boroughs on 15 April 2013.

The cap means no household will be able to claim benefits totalling more than £500 each week, which the government says equates to average household earnings of £26,000 a year (net of tax and national insurance payments). Single people without children will be limited to £350 a week. The cap is expected to be fully operational nationally by September 2013.

A coalition press release said: 'the days of outrageous claims giving people incomes far above those of hard working families are over'. But commentators expressed fears the cap will have the sharpest effect on families with children and on people in areas (especially London) with high housing costs.

Pages

PSE:UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ESRC Grant RES-060-25-0052.